Aqara’s Zigbee Motion Sensor is a discrete way to monitor activity in any space of your home. Hardly larger than one cubic inch, the sensor module will blend in well in any space.
Home Assistant Entities include:
- Motion
- Occupancy
- Illuminance
- Battery Life
Aqara’s newer P1 motion sensor is Zigbee 3.0 Certified, and may experience fewer connection issues than the original model.
Zigbee2MQTT Documentation
Tom (verified owner) –
This is a nice small motion sensor that can be used with or without the base. It set up easily in Home Assistant using the ZHA integration. It runs the Zigbee protocol, so it isn’t clogging up your WiFi network, and has pretty good range.
The sensor reports back motion detection, occupancy, illuminance (how bright the room is), and battery level. The illuminance lets you set auotmations for lights to only cut on when the room is dark enough to need it, even on cloudy days.
The sensor was shipped quickly, too.
Stephen O (verified owner) –
No complaints with the service, despite me contacting and changing the order, the folks at CloudFree were great.
This product however has been massively disappointing. I ordered 3 of them and to say they are unreliable is an understatement. I tried putting two of these in the same small room. The idea was to monitor motion and keep the lights on if either sensed motion.
The lights kept turning off. Debugging these is also difficult because you can’t tell if it senses you and there is something wrong the automations. There is no indicator lights. For some this could be a positive. I replaced these with a single Sonoff motion sensor and it does exactly what is expected.
It’s also hard to figure out what these devices actually “see”
On the plus side they do have a lux sensor in them so there is that…
Kenny Stier –
Hey Steve,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. We use an Aqara Motion Sensor for lighting in a back room and it works well for us.
If you are using Home Assistant automations, consider putting the automation in “Restart” mode, and using the occupancy sensor instead of the direct motion sensor that appears. Here is our automation: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Xv5TmxSjx9/